The Flexibility of the Four Stages of Competence

By Jared M. Spool

Originally published: Nov 16, 2011

Lost for decades, an old model has re-emerged to help how we look at today's design
challenges. In the 70s, psychologist Noel Burch suggested a model for how we master skills
and relationships, calling it the "conscious competence learning model." It fell into
obscurity for decades, only to resurface as a powerful perspective for experience
designers.

The four-stage model is intriguingly simple, describing a person's path from ignorance to
mastery:

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence

This is where our person starts. They are pretty bad at what they are trying to do,
however, they are completely unaware of how bad they are. In fact, in many cases, the
unconsciously incompetent person actually thinks they are pretty good at it,
which gets in the way of them improving.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence

Our person has now realized there is much more to what they are trying to do than they
realized, and they don't really know what they thought they knew. In this stage, the
consciously incompetent individual may become overwhelmed by what seems to be a vast
knowledge area they can't quite grasp.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence

Here our person has overcome what they didn't know and started the path of learning. The
consciously competent person executes their tasks much more successfully, but the focus
and attention it requires has the price of being slow.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence

In this final stage, our person has now internalized all the knowledge and can utilize
their understanding without active thought or concentration. The unconsciously competent
person completes the tasks with grace and speed.

This concrete description of skill and knowledge mastery has many applications in the
world of experience design. In fact, we've recently seen it mentioned so often, we've been
tempted to create a drinking game around it.

This model is a fabulous lens delivering insights into several different dimensions of the
design work we do. It helps us understand our own knowledge of our users, how our users
relate to their objectives, how we become better designers, and how intelligent interfaces
work. Few other models give us this kind of flexibility.

Applying the Model To Our Knowledge of Our Users

An obvious application for the conscious incompetence model is to explain how well we know
our users. The four stages map nicely into how we understand the people we're designing
for.

Many design teams start off unconsciously incompetent, not knowing much about
their users, yet believing they do. They make design decisions, often not realizing the
lack of their knowledge, that inevitably work against them. The lack of feedback that
keeps them ignorant about their users also keeps them ignorant about the poor fit of their
designs.

At some point, feedback comes into the organization and they realize they don't know much
about who their users are and what they are trying to do. They are hit with a wave of
reality about how bad their designs are, but they aren't sure what needs to be done to
make it better. They've reached conscious incompetence.

As the design team dissects what's happening, they start to form strategies and
understanding around their options. After a while, their design practice becomes
consciously competent. Solving every new design problem is an adventure and learning
experience (and often energizing and fun).

With experience, they learn to handle the more common and simple cases with ease. Design
patterns and rich understanding of their users give the unconsciously competent
team a fluency in their design process that produces solutions quickly.

Applying the Model To Our Users' Objectives

Turning the model's lens in a different direction, we see how our users approach their own
objectives and the designs we present to them. For example, let's look at a small business
owner, say a small lawyer's practice, trying to handle their own bookkeeping and client
invoicing.

These lawyers, thoroughly trained in the law, start their business with little-to-no
business knowledge. When it comes to keeping track of receipts, expenses, and client
income, they make many mistakes without realizing it, thus being unconsciously
incompetent about what they need to do.

As they learn about their mistakes (probably from angry clients and a frustrated
accountant), they realize they have to change, but don't quite know exactly what to do
about it. Now they are consciously incompetent with their bookkeeping.

With some online research and help from their accountants and other colleagues, they learn
basic procedures, making them consciously competent. They only know how to
handle the basic, most common tasks. They still struggle with anything out of the
ordinary.

Finally, after years of experience running their business, they handle the invoicing and
bookkeeping easily, even when unusual edge cases come up. They don't think about it much,
making them unconsciously competent. They've traveled the full cycle.

Applying the Model To Becoming Better Designers

When we're working with our clients to help improve their design practice, we use the four
stages model to help explain where their team members are at.

The team members who haven't thought about the process of design before are
unconsciously incompetent.

Those new-to-design folks who understand design is important, but don't know what the
right ways to create great designs are consciously incompetent.

Then there are the designers who are literate in the basics of good design practice, but
have to think about each design step. They are consciously competent.

Finally, the most advanced designers who are fluent in design techniques and skills,
consistently demonstrating at how easy it is for them to produce great work, are
unconsciously competent.

Applying the Model To Intelligent Interfaces

We've even used the four stages to explain what happens in the designs we're creating.
Imagine that we're working on a form field that takes in a phone number.

An unconsciously incompetent way to design the field would be to accept any
characters without any validation. The user could type in ABCDE and the application would
accept it without saying a word, even though it'll cause problems down the road.

A consciously incompetent implementation would present an unintelligible error
message, such as "DATA ERROR" that doesn't help the user know what's wrong or what to do
differently.

Contrast that with a consciously competent design that could tell the user that
phone numbers can only be numbers or a plus sign and they have to remove any spaces or
dashes.

The ideal implementation would demonstrate unconsciously competence, by
accepting all different formats for phone numbers, intelligently interpreting whether it's
international or US format, and displaying it accordingly. The user wouldn't have to think
at all about what they are typing in, as long as they enter something that feels right to
them.

Reaping the Benefits of the Four Stages of Competence

A great model gives us a way to talk with our teammates about the designs we're creating.
It helps us see where we're currently at and where we want to go.

For example, if we can implement different design strategies to help our users with their
own stages of competence. For users who are currently unconsciously incompetent, we can
help them see the downstream effects of their actions. We can give our consciously
incompetent users strategies for becoming better at attaining their objectives. We can
design tools that help our users become fluent, thereby attaining unconscious competence.

We can do the same with our own teams, looking at where they might need improvement. The
model helps us see what the next level of achievement is and gives us insight into how to
attain it.

Noel Burch was on to something. If he only knew how valuable his theory truly was.

Share Your Thoughts with Us

What old thinking have you discovered lately? How do these four stages fit into your design work?
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our UIE Brain Sparks blog.